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FSF Files Suit Against Cisco For GPL Violations

Posted by timothy on from the was-that-print-too-fine-for-you? dept.

Brett Smith writes "This morning the Free Software Foundation filed suit against Cisco for violations of the GPL and LGPL. There's a blog post with background about the case. The full complaint is available too." The short version, as excerpted by reader byolinux, is that "in the course of distributing various products under the Linksys brand Cisco has violated the licenses of many programs on which the FSF holds copyright, including GCC, binutils, and the GNU C Library. In doing so, Cisco has denied its users their right to share and modify the software."

10 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. This is why copyright laws are bad by Throtex · · Score: 5, Funny

    They allow abusive entities such as the Free Software Foundation to go after Cisco. If only the software was distributed without cumbersome GLP and LGPL licensing restrictions, and was truly free like software wants to be, then Cisco wouldn't have been forced to violate the licenses.

    For shame.

    1. Re:This is why copyright laws are bad by mrsteveman1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dammit, if you had kept that going longer than 3 minutes i would have had some entertainment for the afternoon

    2. Re:This is why copyright laws are bad by calmofthestorm · · Score: 4, Funny

      I agree, copyright law is stifling innovation by preventing large American corporations from using the work of small, independent inventors without contributing in kind. Clearly there should be a fee to copyright works, to ensure that only properly-licensed corporations, using licensed, trusted compilers, can produce them.

      I'm Ted Stevens, convicted felon, and I approved this message*!

      * California v. Drew Disclaimer: No I'm not.

      --
      93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
    3. Re:This is why copyright laws are bad by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 5, Funny

      Replied Cisco, "Curse you, Stallman!"

      Actually, their exact words were, "Curse you, Stallman! We'd have gotten away with it, too; if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"

      --
      Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
    4. Re:This is why copyright laws are bad by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Funny

      How "free" is your iPhone?

      Free as in stolen.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    5. Re:This is why copyright laws are bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's what she said!

      Oh...uhhh, nevermind.

    6. Re:This is why copyright laws are bad by calmofthestorm · · Score: 4, Funny

      I suppose you're right. It's especially important that Cisco use quality, trusted software developed in-house or offshore, rather than trusting the danger-fraught open source community. Even aside from patent violations and other blatant disregard of others' IP rights, and the far lower quality of code produced by enthusiastic volunteers as compared to paid, apathetic employees, can you really trust that these self-described "hackers" haven't put in backdoors for their Russian friends? There's just no way to know with open source, and given all this, and studies showing that open source has an astronomically higher total cost of ownership, this is probably the last straw.

      --
      93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
  2. Re:"Oh Jeez, not this shit again!" by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's what scrollbars are for. Thank God they're under the GPL license, or I might not be able to scroll past this tired old discussion.

    --
    <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
  3. Re:The thing about these lawsuits by BlargIAmDead · · Score: 4, Funny

    (3) That the Court order Defendant to account for and disgorge to Plaintiff all profits derived by Defendant from its unlawful acts; [...]

    So am I the only one who thinks disgorge is an awesomely awkward word. All I can see is something like "2 Routers 1 Port!"

  4. Get the name right by SnarfQuest · · Score: 5, Funny

    Get the name right. It's Gnu/Cisco.

    --
    Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.